Douglas Carswell, who is still merrily blogging away despite the happy intrusion of fatherhood, wonders whether the days of the spin doctor might be starting to fade. He says the internet is seriously starting to cut into the middleman of the spin doctor. I am not so sure about that - presumably, spinners will use the internet to try and prolong their role. But there is no doubt that spin doctors,...

The government loves wasting our money. Today we learn that 4,634 civil servants are paid £133,000,000 to do absolutely nothing. Literally nothing. And the cabinet is off on another of its waste-of-time PR exercises in Liverpool. Previous cabinet away days have been held in Birmingham and Leeds. While many might oppose these away days, I am wholly in favour of them. If Brown and his team of ...

Andy Sparrow, formerly of The Daily Telegraph and now at The Guardian, helps to explain what spin doctors mean when they talk bollocks.  Yesterday he followed up an FT story about Jacqui Smith’s apparent reservations about 42 days. Today Sparrow gets an email from a Home Office spin doctor: “It is not our normal policy to comment on scurrilous gossip provided to diary c...

On this day in 1920 (according to the nice people at Wikipedia), the Nazi Party was founded. The days when the Daily Mail publically paraded its sympathies for the Nazis are long gone – their interests lie elsewhere these days… 2 Stories The story Mail hacks have been waiting for This story must have felt like Christmas and Easter

From this morning's Daily Mail. A wall built at a cost of £3,000 by a council so that teenagers would have somewhere to spray graffiti was daubed with its first slogan: 'I paid my tax and all I got was this lousy wall.' The 6ft high by 30ft long barrier was installed in the hope that youths would stop vandalising local property. But ahead of its opening on October 31 a fed-up ...

NHS Blog Doctor: £5 to save freedom of speech on the internet.I am not sure that paying a blogger's legal costs to defend a libel claim is quite going to "save freedom of speech on the internet," but secure in...

Endings and beginnings, as the Doctor’s New Adventures go out in a blaze: Lungbarrow provides some of the answers from Sylv’s decade, in new questions; The Dying Days introduces Paul McGann at the series’ end; landmark unfinished story So Vile a Sin appears at last; The Well-Mannered War says “Bye-bye!” for Tom; and Bernice voyages into several spin-off series. Then L...

Exclusive Gordon Brown’s spin doctor, and former Political Editor at the Daily Record, Paul Sinclair has quit his post. Talk about jumping from a sinking ship at a particularly bad time. Sinclair is of course Brown’s Scottish Spin Doctor and his departure comes on the eve of the Glenrothes by-election, a crucial by-election for Brown. Clearly Mr Sinclair has seen the writing is on the ...

Just as the Daily Mail is taking down istyosty.com for copyright infringement, up pops another story involving the Daily Mail and copyright infringement. This time, the boot is on the other foot… A few days ago, I snapped a picture in The GAP on Oxford Street: their ALWAYS SKINNY mannequins’ legs are not only always

Nick Wood a former Conservative spin doctor has been paid tens of thousands of pounds of taxpayers' money by the party's MPs.